Sunday, March 2, 2008

Our percepts regarding the boundless complexities of our globe’s climate are confusing and confused, and while there is little evidence of immanent consensus on cause and effect, there remains room for some broad based consensus with positive residual affect. Experts can’t agree, but we can.

Somewhere between 1600 and 1900 the world experienced lower temperatures that were evident and not imaginary. Many rivers and lakes in the Northern hemisphere that were frozen have not seen ice since then. Does anyone recall the concerns of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when serious and disquieting reports were predicting potentially catastrophic impact on the world’s food supply because the Earth was entering the dawn of another ice age? Canada’s vast wheat fields were destined to fall to the decimating resurgence of an endless winter. The devastation had numerically specific valuations.

We have suddenly entered a reversal of climactic fortunes. Global warming fears are upon us, suddenly and without warning. In one generation we have an annulment of the foregoing two centuries worth of “climate cooling trends” and related fears. Our food producing “bread baskets” require temperature stability, and historically this has been administered by westerly winds flowing over temperate areas. Air movement fluctuations in the upper atmosphere are unquestionably affecting those westerlies. The new cooling trend might permanently alter the existence of our bread baskets.

We are mesmerized by doomsayers, and although it isn’t in this article that we’ll dissect why, our media enjoys leaping to the story of the moment and fomenting panic. It sells. Such excitement then beckons the economic opportunists. Once money’s attention is captured, the euphoria becomes fuelled by too often ridiculous and expensive boondoggles. I suppose it is only time before opportunists find mechanisms to exploit the ever so subtle Milankovitch cycles.

Facts indicate that over the long term our ocean and the air we breath have been warming since the beginning of the industrial age. As observers we look to the scientific community for analysis, facts, raw data, extrapolations of evidence, and perhaps an occasional opinion. We aren’t even seeking wisdom on this, however we would feel more comfortable with “consensus” from our experts. ANY consensus. Then we could set about finding solutions. Unfortunately we forget that everyone, even our scientific community, is driven by political motivation. It is the ego’s recursive journey. We also forget that the earth is an infinitely complex system before throwing in any accommodations the sun might convery on our current or future well being. Still we seek consensus.

Long term outcomes are always difficult to predict, and although the more extreme dangers lie in what we don’t know, there are elements that should nudge us to modify our habits and behavior which in turn will affect our enthropogenic footprints.

Since consensus on the causes of climate change seems an ephemeral and unachievable concept, let’s establish some harmony where we can: 1. We are collectively polluting our air at an unprecedented rate. Wipe your brow after a few minutes of walking on any street on earth then take a few really deep breaths and while you’re breathing count the particles suspended in air – do we have consensus? 2. We are collectively polluting our rivers at an unprecedented rate. From China to the Gulf of Mexico, dead water flows all around us and we have undeniable knowledge as to what it contains, what it doesn’t contain, and we even know why – do we have consensus?

Disagreements on the degree of humanity’s responsibility for the fluctuations in our climate is a digressing and obfuscating deflection. It remains that there is an abundance of data providing very vivid evidence that we are negatively affecting our environment in serious ways that must be reversed, cooling, warming or not. Such reversal will only be brought about, not through panic, but through collective behavior modification. In addition we will require enormous doses of creativity applied to the development of more efficient methodologies for the uses of energy, and conceiving new sources and forms of energy … if only for self preservation.

3 comments:

excellent excellentWarming or not, addressing the sustainable issues of our global economy is only going to leave the world a better place. Those who fight doing something tooth and nail can't see that doing something can only help, not hurt, and not doing something is most certainly going to hurt-- whether in the form of dirtier air and water or in the form of global holocaust. We absolutely shouldn't be sitting on our laurels as if our nonsustainable world will last forever.

how about wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on fake research to show that climate change is a hoax? the oil industry has already done that. how about wasting an estimated 300,000 lives per year as estimated by the world health organization due to climate change effects already?2009 was a critical year, and we failed to act. You should prepare for the big changes coming. Coasts could be flooded this year, but certainly within a few years, and when the world realizes it has to start mobilizing to deal with hundreds of millions of climate change refugees, maybe then you'll see that a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.